And as long as Colin smiles as he swings that sword, as long as Ree's still super ecstatic to interrupt Jeff to let her finish what she has to say, and the entire team pours its heart out into what they've been giving us so far, by Lyss I know a few people that'll be here for years to come.

Timing, passion, dedication to giving us the best they can... how did Guild Wars 2 manage to build itself? By being the MMORPG we need right now, even if it's not the one we deserve.

/salute :')

Originally Posted by Valerean

I admire your passion for your favorite character, but If I were you I'd hesitate before drawing parallels between self-perceived societal malaise and how nerds feel about a fictional blob of green pixels created in 2001 by a guy called Chris.

First of all, GW2 used social network sites extensively to advertise information about their game. They have Facebook and Twitter accounts, they did AMAs on Reddit, and largely relied of word-of-mouth from there.

Second, they were unusually open for an MMO company when it comes to how they build their game. People in general love to get a look at what happens behind the stage (such as "making of" documentaries), and that's something that they rarely get in the MMO industry. So, that gave gaming geeks a lot of stuff to lap up.

Third, they have some genuine innovation, which is what made talking about GW2 worthwhile in the first place. By innovation I don't mean something revolutionary, just that they attempt something genuinely different from other MMOs in its overall design.

And at some point, the talk just reached critical mass and went viral.

Please. Leave WoW vs. GW2 paradigm out of it. Thats not the intention of this thread. WoW is a separate issue and there is definitely too much hate flying around in both directions already.

You're the one who mentioned WoW in the first place

---------- Post added 2012-08-19 at 12:48 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Dblbaconator

I pretty much agree with this (almost all of your points, except TOR's focus on story being a good thing; I believe that is what crippled the game from the start).

A friend of mine played GW1 back in the day, played it fairly regularly up until now. He's excited as hell for GW2, and I'm...less so. I played a couple beta weekends and got my feet wet, but I don't know yet if it'd be right for me. I cancelled my pre-order (needed the money for other things), but I might pick it up later.

In general, I avoid games that get over-hyped until the dust settles. GW2 is being touted as another WoW-killer, even if it doesn't want to be, even if Anet has no intention of it being one. Without dragging up a WoW vs. GW2 debate, I will say that I'm sure that many people who are going to play GW2 at launch are those who have been burned out of WoW and desperately want something new to play; the friend who got me into WoW is one of them. Will they find it? I dunno. It played alright to me, but lacked something I can't really place. I think it was something about the combat that felt off. Something felt odd, but that could just be me.

Point is, we've reached a snowball effect where this MMO has been in development for years, and the hype has kept on building, and people see it as something new, and they keep on building hype, and now we have this giant hype train that won't stop until next Tuesday. I'll check in in a couple of months to see how it's doing, but for now, I'm staying out.

So SWToRs decent story leveling experience crippled it? It had a lot more than a good story. Old, underspecced computers/ no server transfers for 6 months crippled SWToR

---------- Post added 2012-08-19 at 12:50 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Sylvanie

First of all, GW2 used social network sites extensively to advertise information about their game. They have Facebook and Twitter accounts, they did AMAs on Reddit, and largely relied of word-of-mouth from there.

Second, they were unusually open for an MMO company when it comes to how they build their game. People in general love to get a look at what happens behind the stage (such as "making of" documentaries), and that's something that they rarely get in the MMO industry. So, that gave gaming geeks a lot of stuff to lap up.

Third, they have some genuine innovation, which is what made talking about GW2 worthwhile in the first place. By innovation I don't mean something revolutionary, just that they attempt something genuinely different from other MMOs in its overall design.

And at some point, the talk just reached critical mass and went viral.

What part of the game is genuine and innovative that wasn't in Warhammer?

WoW has been sloughing off subscribers, SWtoR didn't reach the heights it imagined, and new MMOs (TERA, TSW) are really trying to innovate. GW2 comes in, and it is a well polished, deep, semi-innovative game. It interests the consumer.

what I am about to write, states it all, to be brutally honest.. this is what happened to Guild Wars 2

Say you saw a trailer for a movie, and everyone goes nuts for it, that is HYPE.
Now if you've seen the movie, and everyone is talking about how amazing it is, that is WORD OF MOUTH.
There is a difference..

edit: and since you specifically ask if anyone can pinpoint when the insanity began.. I can. It began after the Press Beta.. the endless blogs and youtube videos that all came out.. that's basically the "Birth" of the Guild Wars 2 LEGEND! specially from Yogscast who followed up their videos with MoP Beta videos which they just got into. You could feel the utter boredom, disgust and contempt Simon and Lewis had with MoP after the "GW2 Experience"

The reason Guild Wars 1 didn't garner the attention the sequel has is because it's not an MMO. It's basically a single player game with a co-op mode and multi-player chat system. I played Guild Wars 1 way back when but I never was that into it. I enjoyed the chess match of skill selection but the controls, especially the camera, are pretty crappy. I recently returned to work on getting 30 HoM points and at least once per session I had the camera go into some crazy position making it difficult to see my character.

Guild Wars 2 on the other hand is a totally different beast and really stands on it's own merits. I have done a total 180 on GW2 in the last few months. Here are a couple of my posts from my guild forum back in February:

Not trying to be a dick here but honestly I couldn't care less about Guild Wars 2. Guild Wars was fun for awhile but it wasn't fun enough to me that I ever stuck with it for very long. I still can't fathom how people actually played that game strictly for the PvE. That part of the game was terribly boring IMO.

Well I have a bit of a negative view of GW2 just because of all the hype it's gotten and is still getting. Right now it's the 'next big savior' on the horizon for all the whiny bitches that are never happy with anything in MMOs. I'm getting really tired of hearing them tout this game that nobody has played. Here's some paraphrased examples of what I'm talking about:

(From Rift forums)This game sucks. Trion is fail! This game will be dead in 6 months! I can't wait for SWTOR and GW2 to come out!

(From SWTOR forums)This game sucks. Bioware is fail! This game will be dead in 6 months! I can't wait for GW2 and Tera to come out!

When GW2 comes out, their forum will look like this:

This game sucks. NCSoft is fail! This game will be dead in 6 months! I can't wait for Tera and Game X to come out!

So like I said, it's not GW2's fault but I'm sick of hearing about it already lol.

As beta weekend 2 rolled around, the guy I was conversing with on our forum made a post about it. I didn't have anything going on that weekend so I said 'what the hell, I'll pre-purchase and play this weekend. If it sucks, I'll cancel my purchase.'

Well I haven't looked back since. The game is a lot of fun and my two biggest beefs, gear grinds and trinity are nowhere to be found. I'm a happy camper and I'm glad I kept an open enough mind to try the game.

???
In what context? That I played it? How does this relate to throwing around insults about how "that other game" is made of fail?

Originally Posted by Miah

What part of the game is genuine and innovative that wasn't in Warhammer?

These days it would be hard to find something that is really innovative. So many more or less known games on the market. Pretty much everything was done before. I think that the general opinion about innovative content comes from the overall feeling from playing the game. I guess that innovative is perhaps a bad and overused word. More like independent and self-contained. Following own mix of concepts and mechanics without trying to copy other previously successful set of concepts.

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Originally Posted by Miah

You're the one who mentioned WoW in the first place

What part of the game is genuine and innovative that wasn't in Warhammer?

Warhammer's events wernt "dynamic" didnt spontaniously happen and was only a couple in each area that were very stale with nothing really happening, just mobs standing around untill someone actually showed up and would last for 2-3 stages in the same area, plus warhammer still had those homing in projectiles and dedicated tanks/healers and warhammer has a subscription fee past lvl 10 :P and is still quite heavily quest driven rather than their events and no active dodging/moving out of the way of projectiles, (basically no havok engine to track projectiles/weapons swings properly) by having the entire world not just selected specific areas being affected by dynamic events makes it innovative

I see allways stuff like ''wow is dying as it lost x amount of players'' or ''this game failed as it only has 1million players''

GW2 will do fine, no matter are the sells 1million copies or 10 million copies during the 1st week, its just up to you do you like playing it.

what comes to the ''hype'' im really exhausted on wow, i have ben playing it for 7-8 years now and it never does anything good with its expansions, i would love to switch to another game and gw2 really feels the next mmo to play.

the artwork drew me in. I follow artists all the time and once I came across something daniel dociu did a couple of years ago. I researched it and found out he was doing concept art for a game called guild wars 2. I was hooked and needed to find out as much as possible about the game. I did play wow so I was used to the mmo genre but these designs looked so much better.

one week to go. finally after a 2 year wait.

---------- Post added 2012-08-20 at 01:23 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Rather

GW2 will do fine, no matter are the sells 1million copies or 10 million copies during the 1st week, its just up to you do you like playing it.

A few months ago they presold 3million copies so it looks to do well. Considering WotLK sold something like 4.7-5 million copies.

GW2 has garnered a lot of attention by trying to do things differently.

And then, people like me will play it and realise it's not that much different from all of the other MMOs out there. Thankfully, there's no subscription fees, because based on my beta weekends, unless the game picks up after the initial zone, I wouldn't sub.

"Video games only exist, so that idiots have something to be good at" - Joe Hildebrand

A few months ago they presold 3million copies so it looks to do well. Considering WotLK sold something like 4.7-5 million copies.

3 million seems too high, where did you find that number? There was a thread on Reddit where they looked at the invoice number to see how many people had pre-purchased through Arenanet and I think it was around 1.5 million mid august (that's only Arenanet direct sales though, but 3 million a few months ago from all retailers? Sounds too high)

3 million seems too high, where did you find that number? There was a thread on Reddit where they looked at the invoice number to see how many people had pre-purchased through Arenanet and I think it was around 1.5 million mid august (that's only Arenanet direct sales though, but 3 million a few months ago from all retailers? Sounds too high)

As I recall, the three million number was a Korean financial analyst's prediction as to the number of copies they would sell in the first year.

The MMO genre felt stuck and no longer appealing to me. Queue for dungeons, get your weekly tokens and the gear you need. Hop into tier 1 raid of said game/expansion, do the dungeons for tokens again the week after. Repeat until you get to tier 2, do dungeons weekly etc.

The "fun" part quickly vanished after it felt like a job, in Vanilla and TBC it was fun to me because it still did feel new to me as WoW was my first MMO. Although vanilla and tbc were a lot more grindy than now (fire/nature/shadow resistance gear/potions anyone?) it for some reason was fun. I guess it had to do with feeling so awesome when you finally down a boss you've finally managed to beat after 3 to 10 weeks being stuck on it. Vaelastrasz, Huhuran and 4 horseman pre-nerf, m'uru all being such exceptions. Sure it killed guilds, luckely mine got to finished both expansions and everytime you killed such a "cockblock" you felt awesome.

Still, the concept is old and clearing dragon soul after 3 weeks of being 80 while casually playing (on normal), which I've done just didnt feel like a lot of fun. More like "so, that was it?" to be honest.

It may seem like I am bashing WoW, I'm simply pointing out what killed it for me. I've also played Rift and SWTOR and it all felt a lot the same. People need a change, and the fact I love GW2 this much is that they're pushing the genre to a new direction.

After it's announcement in 2007 I even forgot about GW2 for a year, pretty much lack of information. After that I've been following it off and on, getting really excited around 2010 and still am. I've bought GW and played it, it just didn't really 'catch' my attention too much. I'm sure it's good, though!

The reason Guild Wars 1 didn't garner the attention the sequel has is because it's not an MMO. It's basically a single player game with a co-op mode and multi-player chat system. I played Guild Wars 1 way back when but I never was that into it. I enjoyed the chess match of skill selection but the controls, especially the camera, are pretty crappy. I recently returned to work on getting 30 HoM points and at least once per session I had the camera go into some crazy position making it difficult to see my character.

Guild Wars 2 on the other hand is a totally different beast and really stands on it's own merits. I have done a total 180 on GW2 in the last few months. Here are a couple of my posts from my guild forum back in February:

As beta weekend 2 rolled around, the guy I was conversing with on our forum made a post about it. I didn't have anything going on that weekend so I said 'what the hell, I'll pre-purchase and play this weekend. If it sucks, I'll cancel my purchase.'

Well I haven't looked back since. The game is a lot of fun and my two biggest beefs, gear grinds and trinity are nowhere to be found. I'm a happy camper and I'm glad I kept an open enough mind to try the game.

Haha you're one of those fine examples, I am sure that most people trolling GW2 eventually try it out. Not everyone can like one game, I just wish people would finally accept that fact..